THE STORY SO FAR: When Doretha Rease refused to leave her ramshackle home in the inner city, her niece decided to rebuild it. As the contractors started work, they had to dig out a mountain of junk and learn to navigate a neighborhood teeming with crime and homeless people. The job proved more complicated than anyone had imagined.

Elissa Eubanks/AJC (ENLARGE)

Danny (left) and Roger Funderburk install burglar bars. They think the house would look better without them, but concern for Doretha Rease's safety trump appearances.

MAKING IT HOME An elderly Atlanta woman's journey to a new life in her old neighborhood: • Read the complete series! • Chapter 1: Doretha Rease leaves home | Photos • Chapter 2: No honor among thieves | Photos • Chapter 3: Relics of the past brighten suburbs | Photos • Chapter 4: Structural secrets | Photos • Chapter 5: Cops make unexpected visit | Photos • Chapter 6: Memories return home | Photos • Video: Keeping a promise • Video: Renovations a tall task • Video: 'I can't believe it' • Discuss 'Making It Home'!

Word on the street had it they were undercover cops.

Apparently, no one told the cops.

It was late July, and the contractors renovating the house on Smith Street had finished a long day of painting. Danny and Roger Funderburk didn't usually hang around after hours; this was Pittsburgh, after all, a risky neighborhood in south Atlanta where hookers and drug dealers came out at dark like lightning bugs. But it was a soft summer evening and the brothers felt like unwinding, so they popped a few beers and relaxed on the front porch with one of their helpers.

Suddenly a police cruiser appeared. Two officers jumped out with flashlights, hands on holsters.

"We smelled weed," one said, pointing his light at the porch.

Danny and Roger watched as the officer ordered their helper to drop his shorts and then shined the flashlight into his underwear, searching for narcotics.

The other officer took Danny's pack of cigarettes off the porch and examined it. Then he peeked inside the mailbox mounted on one of the columns.

When the police asked the brothers to empty their pockets, Roger started to comply but Danny refused.

"How stupid do you think we are?" he protested. "The woman who's paying the bills on this house is a Cobb County police officer. Do you think we'd jeopardize this job for a little marijuana?"

Lacking a warrant, the officers moved on.

The encounter angered Danny. Why are they hassling us? he wondered. We're trying to improve the neighborhood.

For months, he and Roger had taken precautions so they wouldn't become Pittsburgh's latest crime victims. They sealed off the openings in the basement with cement blocks, boarded up the house at night, took their tools home with them. They wanted the cops to come around.

In a way, the contractors even hid behind a police badge. When panhandlers tried to hit them up while they were working, they invoked the name of their client, Sgt. Shelvy Davis, who was paying for the renovation with her husband. "That's Sergeant Davis," Danny would repeat, as if he were dangling garlic in front of a vampire.

Undercover cops? Sure, why not?

Sweating the details

The project moved quickly through the summer. The electrician was done by the end of June, the drywallers started on July Fourth, the heating and air conditioning men were finished by the end of the month.

The brothers used eight subcontractors in all. It occurred to them that most of their subs, not to mention their full-time employee, Alejandro Reyña, were Latinos: Mexicans, Hondurans, Peruvians. Danny and Roger had learned most of the Spanish words for tools, calling for a taladro, for instance, when they wanted a drill.

By August, the pace slowed as the Funderburks turned their attention to painting and trim carpentry.

"This is where we cost ourselves money," Danny said in the kitchen one afternoon, showing how they crafted door frames from eight pieces of wood instead of just buying something out of the bin at Home Depot. "We sand all the edges. I hate sharp angles."

"Maybe," allowed Roger, the one who minded the books, "we're a little too detail-oriented."

Bolstering security

As the house progressed through September, one detail was never far from mind: the security of the elderly woman who soon would be living there again.

Shelvy was renovating the house for her great aunt, Doretha Rease. At 81, she had been a housekeeper for most of her working life and had never had much. Now, for the first time, she was going to own quite a few things worth stealing: faucets, lighting fixtures, kitchen appliances and more.

Danny and Roger wanted to install them just before she moved back in. They had seen men pushing shopping carts full of stolen goods down the street, and they didn't want to contribute to their inventory.

In the meantime, they ended their workdays by sliding plywood behind the front windows so no one could look in at night and see the new Mission-style ceiling fans and other enticements.

One evening in early October, the brothers finally shed the plywood and installed burglar bars on the windows and the front door. They started the task as it was getting dark and had to finish by flashlight, slapping late-season mosquitoes off their necks.

"I guess we'd better read the directions," Danny said as he opened the security door kit. "We've never installed one of these before."

Through the window, their light shined on the portrait of Jesus they had found at the beginning of the renovation — their guardian angel now propped on a refinished mantel, behind bars.

'Moving on up'

One morning last fall, Shelvy and her aunt drove to Pittsburgh to see how the house was coming along. When they walked in, they found Roger on his knees touching up the oak flooring in Mrs. Rease's bedroom.

"Joe was looking for you," he said.

Joe Clover, a homeless man in the neighborhood, had gotten Mrs. Rease's permission to stay in her home on cold nights after she moved out.

But she didn't mean he could move in.

"You should have heard him talking to the sheetrockers," Roger continued. "He told them he was going to be living here."

Shelvy rolled her eyes. As far as she was concerned, Joe was beginning to push it.

"That man acts like he's family or something." She laughed. "Maybe if you and Danny didn't give him money, he'd stop coming around."

Joe soon showed up, an unruly thatch of hair poking out from under a soiled baseball cap. He limped onto the porch, checked the mailbox and settled onto the front steps next to Mrs. Rease.

"I'll be living back here soon," he told her.

Mrs. Rease removed her glasses and rubbed her eyes. She couldn't tell whether he was serious or pulling her leg. She certainly had no intention of letting him sleep in her fine new home, but she said nothing to set him straight.

"Yeah," Joe said, "you're moving on up."

Mrs. Rease expected that some of her neighbors might resent her good fortune in having relatives willing to improve her living conditions. Some of them had already asked whether they could stop by and use her washing machine and dryer. Looking at Joe, she wondered what else he wanted.

When Shelvy and her aunt were ready to leave, Joe followed them to the car and lingered outside the driver's window waiting for a handout. Then he sprung a surprise.

"I got baptized last week," he announced.

Shelvy seemed delighted, but the cop in her wanted more facts. She cut to the chase: "Have you stopped drinking?"

Joe's voice dropped. "I don't drink," he mumbled.

Shelvy didn't believe him, but she thought a baptism was worth something anyway. Switching into good cop mode, she reached into her ashtray and scooped up some change.

"Joe," she said, handing it over, "we're going to have a party when Auntie moves back, and you're going to be invited. But I want you to get cleaned up."

She examined the shabby figure standing outside her car.

"I might have to buy you some clothes."

She turned the ignition.

"I meant to bring you a clean cap today."

The window rolled up, and she and her aunt pulled away.

• Coming Friday: Mrs. Rease moves home.